As NASA selects payloads it plans to fly on commercial lunar landers, companies developing those spacecraft are skeptical any landers will be ready to fly this year, as the agency desires.
SpaceNews.com

The Pentagon would ask Congress to approve “special temporary authorities” for the secretary of defense to transfer resources from other services to the Department of the Air Force and the Space Force.
SpaceNews.com

EchoStar wishes it ordered its latest satellite, Jupiter-3, sooner than it did, but won’t seek to play catch up by buying another copy of the satellite in order to meet surging demand for broadband connectivity, executives said Feb. 21.
SpaceNews.com

At the end of 2018, division chief Clare Grason and her entire satellite communications team at the Defense Information Systems Agency moved over to work in the same capacity under Gen. John (“Jay”) Raymond at the Air Force Space Command (AFSPC).
SpaceNews.com

As Blue Origin prepares to start flying people on its New Shepard suborbital vehicle, the company’s founder says the altitude the vehicle can reach will put it at an advantage over Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo.
SpaceNews.com

The Indonesian communications satellite that is SpaceX’s primary payload for its second Falcon 9 launch this year overcame a change of manufacturers and the loss of a U.S. Ex-Im Bank loan to reach the launch pad.
SpaceNews.com

Virgin Galactic scrubbed the Feb. 20 flight test for SpaceShipTwo, the air-launched suborbital spaceplane, due to high winds in Mojave, California. The flight test is now scheduled for Friday, Feb. 22.
SpaceNews.com

The new chair of the House space subcommittee says she’s looking forward to working with the commercial space industry on a number of issues, including oversight of non-traditional space activities.
SpaceNews.com

A slow start for Eutelsat’s Konnect Africa broadband venture and losses in activities beyond the fleet operator’s core business contributed to a 4.4 percent decline in revenue during the last half of 2018.
SpaceNews.com

As LeoStella inaugurated the factory that will be used to produce a series of Earth imaging satellites, the joint venture of Thales Alenia Space and Spaceflight Industries continues to look for other customers.
SpaceNews.com

ASDNews.com: Space

ESA’s proposed Hera mission will already visit two asteroids: the Didymos binary pair. The Hera team hopes to boost that number by performing a flyby of another asteroid during the mission’s three-year flight.
The opportunity arises because Hera will be flying out to match Didymos’ 770-day orbit, which circles from less than 10 million km from Earth to out beyond Mars, at more than double Earth’s distance from the Sun.
In the process Hera will pass both multiple near-Earth asteroids and

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, along with older data from the Voyager 2 probe, have revealed more about the origin of Neptune's smallest moon. The moon, which was discovered in 2013 and has now received the official name Hippocamp, is believed to be a fragment of its larger neighbour Proteus.
A team of astronomers, led by Mark Showalter of the SETI Institute, have used the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to study the origin of the smallest known moon orbiting the

KBR, Inc. (NYSE: KBR) announced today that its global government services business, KBRwyle, has been awarded a $19 million contract by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to support flight operations for its Landsat 7 satellite.
The Landsat 7 satellite is part of the Landsat program, a joint initiative of the USGS and NASA. Landsat satellites provide space-based images of the Earth's land surface, collecting valuable data that helps reduce hunger on Earth, enhances how quickly emergency

The outermost part of our planet’s atmosphere extends well beyond the lunar orbit – almost twice the distance to the Moon.
A recent discovery based on observations by the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, SOHO, shows that the gaseous layer that wraps around Earth reaches up to 630 000 km away, or 50 times the diameter of our planet.
“The Moon flies through Earth’s atmosphere,” says Igor Baliukin of Russia’s Space Research Institute, lead author of the paper presenting the

Tetra Tech, Inc. (NASDAQ: TTEK) announced today that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has awarded the Company a $300 million, multiple-award contract to provide architectural and engineering services to investigate, design, and implement remedial actions at the NASA Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
Under this five-year contract, Tetra Tech will provide environmental assessment and engineering services including regulatory

Comtech Telecommunications Corp. (Nasdaq:CMTL) announced today that during its second quarter of fiscal 2019, its Tempe, Arizona-based subsidiary, Comtech EF Data Corp., which is part of Comtech’s Commercial Solutions segment, was awarded a $1.7 million RF equipment order from a leading satellite antenna manufacturer. The satellite antenna manufacturer, which provides full motion antenna solutions for marine and other mobility applications, will continue to team Comtech EF Data products with

Pioneer partner Open Cosmos are taking mission development to a new dimension, using a virtual reality-like simulation that replicates life in orbit for space technologies.
Through an innovative combination of a plug-and-play test platform and software, the UK Harwell-based SME is slashing the time it takes for space missions to be designed and qualified for launch.
Their online ‘beeApp’ software helps define a full space mission from the ground up, including selection of launchers,

Feeling stressed? You’re not alone. ESA’s Rosetta mission has revealed that geological stress arising from the shape of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko has been a key process in sculpting the comet's surface and interior following its formation.
Small, icy comets with two distinct lobes seem to be commonplace in the Solar System, with one possible mode of formation a slow collision of two primordial objects in the early stages of formation some 4.5 billion years ago. A new study using data

Two tough, resilient, NASA spacecraft have been orbiting Earth for the past six and a half years, flying repeatedly through a hazardous zone of charged particles around our planet called the Van Allen radiation belts. The twin Van Allen Probes, launched in August 2012, have confirmed scientific theories and revealed new structures and processes at work in these dynamic regions. Now, they're starting a new and final phase in their exploration.
On Feb. 12, 2019, one of the twin Van Allen

The 2019 Geospatial Data Summit brings together members of the GIS community across Agriculture, Utilities, Transportation, Infrastructure, and Government for an open dialogue about how the current revolution in Geospatial technologies is transforming real time decision making through enhanced data collection. This Summit will address the current implementations of Geospatial solutions that are unleashing the data's full potential in order to drive productivity, value, and smarter decisions for

LeoStella, a smallsat design and manufacturing company, today announced the official inauguration of its production facilities in Tukwila, Wash. The company is a joint venture between Thales Alenia Space, joint venture between Thales (67 %) and Leonardo (33 %), and Seattle-based Spaceflight Industries. Formed in March 2018, LeoStella has been developing a state-of-the-art production facility to construct smallsats cost-effectively and at scale.
“With the growing number of constellations,

NASA has selected a new space mission that will help astronomers understand both how our universe evolved and how common are the ingredients for life in our galaxy’s planetary systems.
The Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx) mission is a planned two-year mission funded at $242 million (not including launch costs) and targeted to launch in 2023.
“I’m really excited about this new mission,” said NASA Administrator Jim

One of the most successful and enduring feats of interplanetary exploration, NASA's Opportunity rover mission is at an end after almost 15 years exploring the surface of Mars and helping lay the groundwork for NASA’s return to the Red Planet.
The Opportunity rover stopped communicating with Earth when a severe Mars-wide dust storm blanketed its location in June 2018. After more than a thousand commands to restore contact, engineers in the Space Flight Operations Facility at NASA's Jet

Arianespace has completed a major preparation milestone for its next Soyuz launch with integration of the mission’s high-profile payload: the initial six spacecraft in OneWeb’s constellation, which will provide affordable high-speed internet access for users around the world.
The spacecraft – produced by the OneWeb Satellites joint venture of OneWeb and Airbus – will be orbited on Arianespace’s first Soyuz mission of 2019 from the Spaceport in French Guiana. Designated Flight VS21, it has a

The key player has launched a new Aerospace & Defence Report, now available on ASDReports, Leading 15 Small Satellite Companies 2019.
Satellites are typically classified on the basis of function, type of orbit, cost, size, and so forth. This report has classified the small satellite market based on mass, as mass has a greater bearing on the launcher vs. cost trade-off. The mass of these satellites generally refers to in-orbit fully-fuelled wet mass. The term "small satellite" is used for

Airbus is expanding its aerospace activities at its site in Ottobrunn/Taufkirchen, near Munich. Today, it has reached two new milestones, with Bavarian Minister-President Markus Söder and Dirk Hoke, CEO of Airbus Defence and Space, giving the green light for the modernisation of solar array production for satellites, and for the commissioning of expanded clean rooms for optical satellite instruments. In total, the company will be investing approximately €25 million.
In February 2019, Airbus

Spaceflight, the leading satellite rideshare and mission management provider, today announced it will launch two payloads on its first rideshare mission to Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO). The mission is scheduled for no earlier than mid-February 2019 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 launching from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.
The primary payload on the mission is a telecommunications satellite for the South East Asia region. It was built by SSL, a Maxar

Airbus and Japanese telecommunications satellite operator SKY Perfect JSAT have signed a cooperation agreement for the design preparation of the EDRS-D node. This third communication node of the SpaceDataHighway system is to be positioned over the Asia-Pacific region before 2025. EDRS-D will lead to a significant increase in the system’s communication capacity and considerably expand its coverage.
This agreement concerns the co-financing of design and development studies for the satellite

French Guiana has welcomed the four passengers for Arianespace’s second Soyuz mission in 2019, which will further expand the SES-owned O3b satellite constellation delivering low-latency, fiber-like connectivity to customers in more than 40 countries.
This spacecraft quartet – built by Thales Alenia Space – arrived this week aboard a chartered cargo jetliner that landed at Félix Eboué Airport near the capital city of Cayenne, enabling them to be transferred by road to the Spaceport’s